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Taking HR Paperless: 3 Tips to Ensure a Smooth Transition

Increasingly more businesses are transitioning into high-tech office environments with digital kiosks, collaborative workspaces and progressive amenities. Filing cabinets are vanishing as companies worldwide are taking business digital. The office of the future is paperless, and employers maintaining their documents electronically are realizing storage efficiencies, improved accessibility and workflow at drastically lower costs.

Moving a business paperless saves time and money while improving productivity, security and collaboration. The easiest way to get started is by digitizing personnel documents within the Human Resources department. Doing so allows the immediate benefits of paperless efficiency to be realized company-wide. Let technology do the work for you and, with these five tips, soon your company can experience the impacts of going digital.

Preset Record Retention Schedules to Effortlessly Maintain Compliance

Working in Human Resources requires a thorough knowledge of company processes as well as the evolving legal operating requirements. Whether your Human Resources department has one or 100 employees, efficiently managing HR documentation doesn’t come easy, and as a company grows, more workers are hired, which requires additional onboarding documents to be properly handled in compliance with record retention regulations.

The easiest way to improve paper-intensive Human Resources processes is by implementing a content management software solution. Still, employers must be mindful of the statutory rules relating to document retention periods and electronic storage systems to avoid legal consequences. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requires that employment records, like resumes, I-9s and performance evaluations, be preserved for one full year. Content management software allows users to automatically set retention schedules based on the date of which a record is brought into the system, or created. This advanced technology allows HR employees to focus on incoming documents, while the software system continuously monitors existing records to ensure no file is altered or deleted before completing its full retention period. It will automatically purge records that no longer need to be saved, or transport them to a designated archive to be reviewed before final destruction.

In today’s tech-forward business world, digital signatures are becoming more widely accepted. From swiping a finger across an iPad at the local deli, to finalizing the purchase of a home with a stylus pen, the ESIGN Act grants digital transactions with the same legality as a written signature. Avoid the long wait for a performance review signature, give new hires the ability to sign paperwork before they step foot into the office and allow employees to discuss insurance enrollment with their families by signing documents from the comfort of their homes through intuitive ESIGN technology.

Advanced content management platforms have the ability to integrate with electronic signature technologies, like DocuSign®, to enhance signature transactions between employees and their HR documents. This type of integration allows documents to be automatically emailed without user intervention, triggering notifications for recipient signatures and allowing the final countersigned agreement to be routed back into the content management database.

By integrating with third-party business applications, HR departments can streamline document-centric process between programs to eliminate manual data entry. For example, to immediately access paperwork like W-2s or insurance enrollment applications, Human Resources workers can hold CTRL and Right Click on an employee name from within an email or existing HR software platform, to instantly pull up all of that employee’s documents. Employees no longer need to resubmit paperwork or re-enter information between applications. Integrating with a content management system allows all existing data to automatically update and transfer between the programs you work with most.

Web Forms Take the Paper out of Recruiting to Encourage Self-Service

With content management software implemented in a Human Resources department, the main goal is to simplify HR processes. By creating digital employment forms, submitted information can be captured electronically to save HR personnel from manually inputting data. Having data digitally stored within the content management system streamlines communication between departments, encouraging highly-responsive collaboration.

Many document-intensive HR tasks, like employee benefits open enrollment, occur on a yearly basis and require an immense amount of responsibility. By implementing a digital web forms solution, employees from every department are given the opportunity to make changes and adjust information themselves. When an employee is responsible for updating their own personal information, there’s a much greater chance of accuracy. Plus, once this information is captured into the content management database through the web form, the collected data can then be linked to existing and future documentation within the system.

Many users also advertise job opportunities online to encourage candidates to submit their resumes electronically, via web forms. Once an offer is extended, then there is no need to manually input the new hire’s information because it’s already been captured in the content management platform. By automating this process, data can be efficiently collected before the employee’s first day of work. Plus, with all resumes stored, an HR department can easily refer back to past resumes for future job positions. With content management software, paper resumes scanned into the system can be transformed into text-searchable PDFs to further simplify the search.

The Human Resources department can help any business make the transition into a paperless environment. With numerous opportunities to streamline daily processes, from the new hire process to insurance enrollment applications, now is the time to reconsider how your HR department handles employee information. With less paper to shuffle through, Human Resources workers can better focus on serving employees. To learn more, contact Square 9 today.